Sajid Javid declared some values prevalent in certain Asian communities were ‘totally unacceptable in British society’

Mr Javid told the Daily Telegraph a ‘misplaced sense of political correctness’ prevented police and social workers from properly investigating claims of abuse.

Mr Javid said: ‘Well, first of all the perpetrators were disproportionately Asian Muslim men, and I absolutely think there has been a misplaced sense of political correctness that prevented authorities, whether social workers or police, from properly investigating what was going on.

‘If we are to learn proper lessons from this, we have to look at the cultural side of some communities in Britain and see why it is that in some communities there are men that have a view of women that is completely unacceptable in modern British society. Why do they have such a low value of women that they see them as commodities to be abused?’

The Tory minister said the authorities had to ‘get to the bottom of this’ and emphasised that ‘we have to look at the cultural aspects of it’.

The Tory minister’s comments come after inquiries into the sexual abuse of vulnerable girls targeted by Asian men in Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford found that the authorities had failed to protect them

He urged Asian communities to look into ‘what might be going on that we don’t know about’. Mr Javid said: ‘We can no longer be held back in any sense by political correctness.

‘I know plenty of people, British Muslims, men and women, who would 100 per cent agree with that, not only out of a sense of shame but also because of the fear of what else might be going on. Some of the values that certain people in some communities have, in their attitudes to women or on the question of freedom of expression, are just totally unacceptable in British society.

‘We do no one any favours when we don’t investigate or talk about them.’

Mr Javid revealed in a speech to the Union of Jewish Students in 2014 that he had experienced racism at school. He said he was called a ‘Paki’ by a classmate. He said: ‘I did what any cool, calm future Cabinet minister would do. I hit him. And then he hit me, and I hit him back and things sort of went downhill from there.’

Mr Javid, whose background is remarkably different to many of his colleagues, has been tipped as a future Tory leader.

His parents came to Britain from Pakistan in 1961. His father, Abdul-Ghani, worked in a cotton mill before getting a job as a bus conductor.